


prologue: like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins

by ofstardustandthimbles



Series: strange birds [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: here have some feels, this is only an introduction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-01
Updated: 2014-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2234274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofstardustandthimbles/pseuds/ofstardustandthimbles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There once was a boy with white wings<br/>he was a boy whom the angel that fell from heaven<br/>but he was caught in the grips of the devil<br/>and the devil stained his wings black </p><p>this is the story of how an angel becomes a demon thirsty for blood</p>
            </blockquote>





	prologue: like some child possessed, the beast howls in my veins

**Author's Note:**

> disclaimer: I do not own OUAT, Disney, or Peter Pan. all credit goes to their respective owners. title credit to Florence + The Machine.

He hears their taunts.

The boy closes his eyes and grinds his teeth together as he walks through the crowded village. Mothers hide their children behind their backs. Fathers turn away in disgust. Young adults whisper to each other behind their hands, their eyes burning holes through his already stabbed back. The children are no different. They run beside him, throwing rocks and pebbles. Some scrape his skin, causing blood to seep from the cut on his face and neck.

This goes on for several years.

He lies in bed beneath thin bed sheets, dreaming of a place where he did not hear them. He was flying in the sky with the stars at his head and the wind in his ears. Below him, an island beneath a rainbow glows in the high sunlight. Smoke litters the air from the camp at the other side of the island, and at the bay was a pirate ship. He sees mermaids flicking their tails beneath the water, and a cove full of treasure as they glisten in the sun. The place is beautiful.

But he wakes up, and the dream is done.

The boy goes through the same thing every day. Even adults throw their unwanted waste at his face as the children mark him with stones and rocks. He does not say anything, but merely covers his face with his arms and runs through the mud. He slips and falls in the murky liquid. The people around him laugh, others are disgusted, and a few only show a small sliver of sympathy. They leave him in the dirt.

A carriage nearly runs through his back if he had not stumbled out of the way.

He sits by the door. His parents argue about something he does not know about, but their voices are too loud. The entire village can hear them screaming at each other. Their shadows dance on the walls, and the boy peeks through the crack of his bedroom door. They are just like everyone else. Always fighting, always screaming.

The fighting goes on as his father prepares for the Ogre Wars. When the people do not taunt him, he sees the soldiers injured and crippled as they return from the war. Some have a missing limb, and some have lost their sanity, they are sent away to some place far away and never return. He notices some of the older boys and girls being ripped from their parents’ hands by the soldiers. Just like that, they are whisked away to war.

He frowns as he watches a girl being pulled away from her father at his window. This was a world of twisted lies and deceit; he swears that when he grows up, he will not be like them. He will not taunt anyone just like they taunted him.

As he grows older, he becomes aware. He now learns the true meaning of their words, something he was innocent to when he was younger.

His parents fight once more. He cannot sleep, for they scream so loudly, his ears begin to bleed. He sits up in bed and stares out the window, seeking comfort and refuge in the stars that seem to shelter him in the darkest of nights. He pushes the sheets off of him and walks towards the window, cringing whenever his father yells.

(When he grows up, he would not make the same mistake his parents did.)

His father yells his name. The boy, now a teenager, stops and turns towards the door. He is yelling about something – something about him, not something he had done – but surely, his parents must know the hell he goes through the village ever since he was a young boy. He comes home every day with a cut or a scrape on his neck or on his face, there are scars upon scares on his skin.

(He hides the pain so well; he begins to build up walls. He is no longer that little boy who would cry when a girl would spit in his face, but a boy who would rip apart her throat with his knife-like teeth if she dared to defy him.)

His green irises peek through the crack of his door. His mother and father quarrel in the dim candlelight, their shadows dancing across the wall. He looks nothing like his mother, a woman with long dark curls and bright blue eyes. He looks more like his father, a man with hair that once was gold, and he bears his grandfather’s forest green eyes. His skin is fair like his mother’s.

His mother slaps his father hard across his cheek. A deafening silence falls upon the house.

Tears stream down her cheeks, her face flushed pink and her chest heaves heavily as she struggles to breathe. _“You can take him. Go ahead; he’s your bastard after all. The only reason we put up with each other is because of him,”_ she whispers.

His heart stops beating in his chest. The boy turns and does not wait to hear his father’s response. He disappears in to the night before anyone could notice the bastard leaving the forest.

 

* * *

 

There is a small boy in his bed.

The Pan sits at the tree with one hand stretched towards the familiar cold glass of the window, his forest green eyes caught in numbness. His heart ceases to beat as a woman with long dark curls – like the boy in the bed – walks in the room with a smile gracing her lips. Standing beside her is a taller man with his skin the color of a soft wood, his eyes filled with a certain fondness for the woman and the boy in the bed. The boy in the bed has hair identical to his mother. The Pan watches the boy turn under the sheets, reaching for his parents.

The father places his hand through his.

How long has it been? Has it really been that long? The Pan ponders and retreats in to the shadows, his gaze fixed at the family in the window. They used to look at _him_ like that. They used to hold _his_ hand and tell him stories to get him to sleep with wonderful dreams at night. They used to whisper their love for _him_ in _his_ ear whenever the wind blew. It felt like days – no, _hours_ – since he left. He meant to return, but they do not remember him.

No, they _replaced_ him.

(The Pan chews on his lips and begins to ask himself why he came back in the first place.)

Green apathetic irises trail towards the man and the woman through the window. The boy begins to cry. The father smoothes the boy’s hair and holds him in his arms to comfort him. The woman holds the boys hands in her own, her lips curved in to a reassuring smile as their son wakes from a nightmare, trembling beneath his father’s strong hands. Her lips press against his forehead. She squeezes his hands for support and begins to sing.

The Pan’s blood began to boil. She once sang to _him_ under the dark gaze of the moon. He once held _him_ whenever his bones shook to the core. They once held _him_ in their arms and rocked him to sleep. They once held _his_ hand and told _him_ that everything was going to be okay, and that as long as they were there, nothing bad would ever happen to him. _Nothing._

(But that was a lie. They never knew the hell he went through. They did not have rocks and stones pelted at his face or to have their lungs filled with water.)

The boy with the elfish features bangs on the window angrily, screaming and yelling words that cuts like a knife through flesh. He screams at the top of his lungs, pushing and kicking the window with all his might, but it does not budge. The man and the woman do not even blink; it is almost as if he was not there.

It is almost as if he never existed.

(He reminds himself that they did not want him – they only put up with him because he was his bastard son that everyone condemned him to the blazing inferno.)

The glass cracked beneath his fist and he recoils as if it burned his hand. Blood trickles from his knuckles and he cradles it, hot tears pricking his eyes. The window abruptly opens, and the white curtains that once sheltered him from the moonlight kissed his skin. The Pan looks straight forward. Standing before him is the man with the soft olive skin with the boy in his arms.

He thinks of his mother and father quarreling that night. He wonders how they are still under the same roof.

The Pan’s lips tremble as his father gazes at him. _“P-Papa?”_

His father’s hand passes right through him.

The Pan stops and stares at his father’s hand outstretched in the empty air. He does not see him. His hand is right through his chest, yet he feels nothing. He does not feel the warmth of his hand or the beating of his heart. He looks down to see his father’s hand right through his chest, his body nothing but thin air in his grasp.

He ceases to _exist._

(There is a crack in his heart. Something inside grows dark and something black blossoms in the darkest depths of his heart. A tear trickles down his cheek.)

 _“P-Papa, there’s a shadow at the window,”_ the boy in his arms whimpers.

 _“Hush, there’s no shadow. It’s just us,”_ his mother coos him gently and presses a kiss to his forehead. _“Nothing will ever harm you, Bae, not with us around. We love you very much.”_

The Pan screams in to the night in agony and fury. There is only the sound of a harsh wind rattling through the trees.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. enjoy this au there will be more feels
> 
> 2\. more of my work can be found on my tumblr (same url)
> 
> 3\. reviews are like thimbles. they make you pink and feel fuzzy on the inside.


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